Phonetic transcription of the word "true"?

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The transcription for <true> that you see in dictionaries is phonemic, that is, it's an abstract representation of the word. The phonetic transcription represents what happens in actual pronunciation and it would be like this ['t̠hɹ˳u] (superscript h). In this case, the place of articulation of /t/ is retracted because of /r/, so it is no longer alveolar but post-alveolar. /r/ is devoiced because of /t/ aspiration. They both form an affricate cluster, so as you say, the pronunciation is /tʃru/ rather than /tru/.

Hello, This is really interesting. My British English pronunciation would also tend towards /tʃruː/ I came across a discussion of this recently regarding the word tree in an article by Bruce Derwing in the excellent book The Linguistics of Literacy (ed Downing, Lima & Noonan) when doing some work on visual word recognition. Derwing calls the sound you are describing a 'slightly affricated and retroflex variant of /t/' which is neutralised before /r/ and therefore very difficult for speakers to distinguish from /t/ itself. This is interesting in the discussion of how visual word recognition occurs - assembled phonologically or led by orthography - as he writes that young children often make a č interpretation with the preliterate spelling chree. Derwing proposes that the main/only reason we interpret /t/ is led by the orthography. Why professional phoneticians should also prefer /t/ in dictionaries etc, I'm afraid I cannot answer. The discussion of this is on p197 of the book listed above if you'd like to find it. Best wishes, Ed